


two of a kind

by icemachine



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, POV Third Person Omniscient
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:35:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28817892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icemachine/pseuds/icemachine
Summary: A rewrite of Doom Patrol season 2. Featuring: no Jane drug subplot, a better storyline for Roni, better treatment of the Underground written by someone with DID, Larry and the Negative Spirit having a better relationship, character un-death, and more!
Relationships: Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	two of a kind

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my season 2 rewrite! I don't know how often this will update, but enjoy. I'm @keegbovo on twitter and tumblr.

Desperate, crestfallen, sorrowful — these are all words that describe Larry Trainor in this moment, as he rests on his knees, his hands clasped together on the platform of his bed, unbandaged and open and entirely unholy.

He hasn’t prayed in fifty years.

His last prayer was sometime in the 70s, and it looked exactly like this; the same position, the same state of undress, the same desperation. The only difference now is that his fear is entirely different. Back then it was himself, his hatred of his own emotion, his horror at the concept of love, and now his fear is embedded in the lives of his friends. He has known them for decades, they are  _ so  _ important, and now they’re stuck minuscule, as small as the world makes them feel. 

They don’t deserve this, and Larry doesn’t know what else to do.

He exhales, his breath burning. “I don’t know if you’re even listening to me,” he says, “I would understand if you’re not inclined to—”

His first instinct upon hearing the crackling is a thought of retribution. He prays for the first time in fifty years and feels the wrath of God immediately; that’s simply how his life goes, that is his level of luck. 

He, quite swiftly, remembers his passenger, who has their hand up against his chest now. It’s almost suffocating, like --  _ he is not mad at you, you have done nothing wrong. _

Larry finds comfort in the blue light blooming from his chest, thinks of it like a harvest —  _ finally  _ he has found the reward of peace between them, finally he is on the path to harmony with his Spirit. The Spirit is  _ his,  _ utterly, now. They belong to each other.

Larry stands up; an idea has invaded him.

God cannot help him. He doesn’t even know if he believes in that anymore; it was forced upon him as a child, and certainly no just God would allow what has happened to him.

But the Spirit listens. The Spirit’s powers are of a similar omnipotence.

“Negative Spirit, release.”

It exits his body with care. He finds some sort of odd solace in seeing the electricity move outside of him and place itself in front of his own body. Floating there, slightly above him, inquisitive, ready, willing.

The Spirit looks at him with similar desperation, like --  _ I know. I don’t want to think about it either —  _ so long ago, burrowing its way inside of him again. It’s always like this, there is always  _ some  _ problem to fix.

“Can you,” he says, moving closer to them, confident in the Spirit’s sincerity,  _ knowing  _ their motivations is like knowing God as he thinks about it now, “get them back to normal?”

Their minimal expression changes; now their eyes are squinting slightly at him, like he is sunlight, and they’re approaching him, Larry tries to stop his anxious bubbling within,  _ tries  _ to feel something other than a serene intimidation—-

  
  
  
  
  


He’s seeing the world through the Spirit’s point of view, baby blue bird-light, crackling in passion. He knows this night. It is the night after they defeated Mr. Nobody and left the painting. Larry watches his own body undress and press itself into his bed, fall vast into sleep, until the scenery transforms into something better — Cliff’s room, his racetrack, where the others have decided to settle. The world zooms in on Cliff, who waves at them in what they can both tell is sorrow. Just sorrow, always sorrow.

The Spirit extracts a tree from the racetrack, holds it in their palm. He can feel, in this flashback, their concentration — their  _ dedication,  _ and it is admirable, it is honorable, it makes Larry’s anger boil up,  _ he let this being be tortured— _

No.

He can’t give into that again.

The Spirit emits a blinding light, and he hears the electrical noises increase, crackling-zapping the air and life around them. When the light dissipates, it is revealed: the tree is ash now.

He can also feel the Spirit’s anger.

Larry has never felt the Spirit’s emotion before this flashback. He imagines that it’s because he was never open to it, because he  _ despised— _

but now the Spirit’s emotion, their anger at their own inability to help, is too rooted in familiarity, their anger sprouting from within them and flowering. It is also the most intense emotion he has ever felt; he thought his self-hatred was unbearable… does the Spirit feel everything like this? It feels similar to being burned alive, like the anger they have is manifesting fire within his veins, charring his skin up back into something recognizable, something human. The Spirit is just like him.

It makes sense.

  
  
  
  
  


And then he’s back in his bedroom, the Spirit’s hand lingering against his cheek until they pull it back, crossing their arms pointedly.

“Oh,” Larry says. “You already tried.”

+

_ LONDON, 1927 _

Dorothy Spinner sits in her cage as the souls around her prepare for their performances; this is all that she is now, perhaps all that she will ever be, the Ape-Faced Girl, the highlight of the show, an exhibit for people to walk through. Her cage, she thinks to herself, is so small, and she is so small, and in the future she will be even smaller, but her mind is vast. Her mind houses the only beings that have ever shown her kindness. On the inside, she can hear Manny whimpering. He wails like a terrified puppy, like a life stripped of loyalty. It shatters her fragility, it destroys every hope she has.

She’s never going to get out of here.

A woman she has come to known as Nicole approaches her. Nicole lacks humanity. Nicole applies her makeup and adjusts her stockings and covers the outside of her cage up so she cannot see, and as Nicole rolls her onto the stage, tears her away, she hears Herschel’s voice within her—

_ Be strong. _

But Dorothy is eleven. She is not supposed to be strong yet. She is supposed to be eleven.

“A hideous curiosity,” boasts the Ringmaster, “captured deep in the icy wilderness, where legends say she is the cursed progeny of…. well, we’ll leave that up to your imagination once you see what she can do. She has been bestowed with unnatural gifts, and born with looks that will surely stain your memories for years to come. Ladies and gentlemen, the Ape-Faced Girl!”

She’s in a silk nightgown and nothing else, trembles as she is revealed to the gasping, cackling audience. The light is just bright enough to obscure her vision, but she can still see the food they’re throwing at her; one chicken bone hits her leg, which will undoubtedly bruise. 

They do this every day.

She’s never going to get out of here.

  
  


“Calm down,” the Ringmaster says. “Calm down  _ now. _ ”

His voice is just terrifying enough to still the room, and someone is covering her cage again. She knows what she has to do. She hates what she has to do. She cannot be cruel ---  _ will not  _ be cruel — 

“There is much more to see of this,” he continues, waving the shadow of his staff around, “I promise you. She just needs a little darkness and quiet to concentrate and conjure up a  _ very  _ special friend of hers. Behold, an animal the likes of which you have never seen before…”

The piano music kicks in. She can feel her chest fold up, imagines her heart sinking into the lake of her stomach like a change to the night.

“I know you don’t like it,” she whispers, her eyes shutting tight as she tries to banish every sick memory from her mind. The things that they do to you here are despicable. She has been irreparably damaged. “But it will all be over quickly if you behave.”

“A ferocious beast tethered to her deranged mind…”

_ We just have to do as he says. _

“The ape girl’s gruesome pet…”

Manny manifests on the stage. It feels like something has been torn out of her viscerally, extracted from the very depths of her being.

“No sudden movement,” he warns. “This is no tame circus animal.  _ This  _ is a true wicked conjuring, with teeth that can rip through a human skull.”  _ But he’d never do that.  _ “Would you like to watch him dance? Give us a twirl.”

The audience laughs as he twirls. Dorothy can  _ feel  _ his humiliation. 

_ We’ll be done soon. _

_ I promise. _

“Around the other way.”

But Manny does not turn. He stares out into the audience, the ground shaking with his low growls.

_ What are you doing?  _

Panic floods through Dorothy like a storm. He’s -- he’s looking at someone.

“I said, the other way.”

Manny obeys, turning the other way, and —

the Ringmaster’s body is thrust up against her cage. For a moment, she wonders if—

“Control your animal.”

She is not lucky. She feels as if no one can save her. They hold Manny down, shooting him with arrows, and Dorothy can still feel it, Dorothy can still feel his -- anger, now, fear, anger, fear and anger mixing together into an emotion that she cannot yet comprehend.

She covers her ears. She just wants it all to  _ stop,  _ she wants this life to be  _ over— _

“MAKE. STOP.”

She does not recognize this voice.

It is deeper, bordering on monstrous. It jolts fear into her veins.

_ Who is this? Which one are you? _

“HELP. GIRL.”

_ What do you mean? Help us… how? _

She is afraid, knows only fear in her life, but…  _ if she can get out— _

“MAKE. WISH.”

And then the burning begins, a candle growing out of her hand, the flame sending galactic pain through her skin.  _ SAVE. GIRL.  _

She’s out of options.

She blows out the candle.

She blows out the candle, and the lights go out—-

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Deafening screams, horror—-

  
  
  
  
  
  


When she looks again, her cage door has been torn off, and the Ringmaster’s severed head is resting on the floor, sad, pitiful. Look at what he got in return. Look at his life now. 

The voice says that she is safe. She does not feel safe. In the shadows, one man left alive—-

  
  
  


_ This is a special place. This is where we belong now. This is who we belong with. _

  
  
  
  
  
  


Larry has been making tiny pancakes every single morning for the past — he doesn’t actually know how long it’s been. It feels like it has been eternity. It feels like sixty years of loneliness.

He doesn’t mind helping them. He truly doesn’t. Helping them has increased his precision; it takes a special skill to get the pancake and the butter and the syrup  _ perfectly  _ on the plate, without burning it, without dropping it. For the first week after the transformation of his friends, Larry made a mistake with every meal, but now he has it down. He places the syrup on the perfectly-cooked pancake. He places the perfectly-cooked pancake on the tiny doll plates. 

It’s perfect.

Maybe he is capable of good.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Every morning, the man who ruined their lives wakes his science experiments up with a bell. Rita is fucking sick of it.

“Must you wake us every morning with that bell?”

Niles looks excited.

Not even cautiously, this time. Just excited. She wishes she could feel the same.

“No more bells after today, Rita. I promise.”

Rita stares at him; she would be inquisitive and excited if she had even a  _ shred  _ of confidence that the substance will work this time. It’s never going to work. They’re going to be stuck like this forever.

“Larry is completing his final test as we speak,” he beams, as Vic and Cliff exit their tents. She admires Vic’s optimism, the way he shines — but she’s more inclined to rest her opinions with Cliff, whose confidence lies in the fact that Niles’ brand of optimism is a facade.

They all know that optimism is a waste of time.

“And it’s  _ definitely  _ going to work this time,” Cliff spits —  _ hisses.  _ “Unlike every other fucking time?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


Honestly, it looks like a fucking meth lab in here. 

Well. He imagines that it looks like a meth lab; Larry doesn’t know  _ what  _ a meth lab looks like, but he’s pretty sure that it looks at least somewhat similar to the setup he has here. Beakers full of chemicals connected to beakers full of chemicals. The only difference is the frog, and the fate of the universe lies on the very small back of this frog.

“Okay, buddy,” he whispers to it. It’s useless -- the frog cannot understand him, and it won’t change the probable outcome. He’s never going to give up, though, he has to have  _ some  _ sort of noble duty, and if his noble, God-given duty is actually making tiny furniture and tiny pancakes for his tiny friends, then, well, so be it. “No pressure, but we’re counting on you.”

He releases the substance into the frog’s habitat. Nothing happens, except for a loud endless beeping noise that, moments later, he recognizes as the fire alarm.

“Shit. Shit, shit…”

He’s burned his pancakes. He brings the pan to the sink, silently tears himself apart — it seems that Larry cannot do  _ anything  _ right. This becomes even more obvious when he realizes that the frog is dead. He can’t do  _ anything  _ right, he is useless, he’s —

He expects the Spirit to stir when this thought crosses his mind in repetition, but there’s nothing. He’s so fucking  _ lonely. _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Niles sends Rita to collect Jane from her tent. It’s a simple mission, but one that she hates herself for obeying. She should hate Niles. She should be angry, her anger should boil over and spill out — but instead she follows his orders. It’s sickening.

She feels like a monster. 

Rita wants to feel beautiful, but no one is beautiful at this size; anyone this small is simply  _ pitiful.  _ She is a thing to be pitied, now, and becoming a pitiful being has always been a larger, omnipresent fear.

She knocks on the fabric of Jane’s tent. It’s utterly ridiculous.

“Don’t wanna talk right now,” Jane calls, from inside the tent; her voice sounds muffled, cracks a bit, and Rita feels an odd wave of concern hit her.

“Niles wants to see you. It’s morning.”

“Fuck Niles.”

“Well, yes, but he says it’s important.”

“Fuck Niles.”

….

….

….

“Jane, are you okay?”

“Fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

“I am literally begging you to go away.”

Rita turns to follow Jane’s begging, but —

But —

She’s not sure why she even  _ cares.  _ Jane has never been nice to her; perhaps, she thinks, her traumatic past has boxed her in to keep her safe, and her demeanor is a coping mechanism. She knows Jane. If Rita was the one struggling, she’d want someone to talk to. It has to be the same for Jane, right?

So she walks in, shaking slightly. Jane’s head is underneath a pillow.

“I told you to—”

“Well, tough. We’re going to have a conversation, Jane, whether you like it or not.”

She throws the pillow off of her head and sits up. “Fucking -- what do we even have to talk about?”

Rita takes a look at her. Jane’s eyeliner is smudged, old, and not in the way Hammerhead’s is. Her face is damp.

“You’re depressed,” Rita notes, but it comes out unintentionally monotone. 

“And you care because…?”

“Frankly, I’m not exactly sure. I just know that we need  _ all  _ of us on board to get back to something that could even somewhat resemble normal. So, we’re talking about it.”

Jane laughs. “Oh, I get it.”

“Get what, exactly?”

She smiles, wide and toothsharp, as if she’s about to say a statement that will make something inside of Rita implode. “You,” she says, tapping her fingers on the bed, “are scared.”

“Preposterous.”

“Is it?”

“What could I possibly be scared of?”

Jane looks down, contemplates her next moves; she gets off of the bed, walks closer to Rita. So close. Breath. “You know,” she says, quiet and low, like a risk, “I’ve never thought you were a monster.”

And she walks away, out into their camp, like it means nothing, like she hasn’t shattered Rita’s perception entirely. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“This is important,” Niles explains -- he still believes in something. “The.. transformation could prove to be very exhausting, and could take up to several hours.”

“Wait,” calls Vic, voicing everyone else’s thoughts. “Did you just say hours?”

“It’s a very delicate and intricate process. The chemical needs time to permeate in each and every cell of the body—”

“Uh, I’m no asshole scientist with some sort of fucked up complex,” Cliff interrupts, his fists closing tight together, “but what about those of us who don’t  _ have a body?” _

“Well, my theory is that it will interact with the carbon—”

“Nope. Not buying it. You guys really think he’s just somehow suddenly capable of reversing this bullshit? He’s had weeks. Nothing’s happened yet and it sure as shit isn’t gonna happen today.”

Vic approaches him cautiously. Makes his point: “You don’t know that.”

“Look around you, Vic. He’s a shitty scientist and  _ we’re  _ his fucking life’s work. What does that tell you?”

Rita holds a hand up. Somehow, it silences him. Cliff’s anger is omnipresent these days. “You—”

“Pancakes,” booms the voice of an in-comparison giant Larry, who has saved them all, is a perfect savior, has stopped Cliff’s angry tirade.

“Make sure you fuel up before you begin,” Niles says. 

Everyone can tell that Cliff is unfortunately right by the way that Larry’s shoulders sink at these words.  _ Great.  _ Dorothy thinks back to her time in cages. When she was stuck. It’s sort of like that -- like  _ never getting out,  _ like finding freedom and having it stolen again.

“Uh, Chief…”

The room follows Larry’s depressed nature, each body sinking down in anger, defeat, exhaustion. They are all bodies now, they are all tired, they are all worn.

Except, unsurprisingly, Cliff.

“I fucking called it.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“Do you think…?”

Rita takes her last bite of pancake. Everyone but Niles has deserted the table -- Jane back in her tent, Vic jogging, Cliff and Dorothy… she doesn’t actually know where they are, but they’re not  _ here,  _ and her mind has been chewing on this suggestion for days, for every eternity. He’s not going to like it; it’s  _ better  _ that they’re gone. She doesn’t know what to make of Niles now that the truth has been unsheathed blade-like; he is an entirely different person, yet the same, everything uncovered and wrapped up again. 

“Hm?”

“Do you think it might be time to try something else? If science isn’t working, then maybe we should look elsewhere. After all, what happened to us in that painting wasn’t…. scientific, was it?”

She raises her eyebrows, nods her head in suggestion, but she doesn’t need to. Niles understands her perfectly. Neither of them want to see Willoughby again. The last time—

“No,” he says. It’s firm; he means it, he is drowning in his selfishness. The unspoken truth is that Willoughby will  _ want  _ something, Willoughby knows too much, Willoughby has seen him at his darkest, and now that they have all seen the darkness frothing inside of him… it’s simply too much of a risk.

“At the very least he could point us in the direction of—”

“ _ No. _ Look, I’m sorry, but he can’t help with this.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


_ THE UNDERGROUND _

A lake, tinted yellow. An unwelcome memory turned into solace. Baby Doll sits next to her, Scarlet Harlot and Flit and Pretty Polly in the background, all in silence, all in their own mourning.

Jane closes her eyes. Tries to bask. But:

“You can’t keep doing this.” It’s Hammerhead, it is  _ always  _ Hammerhead. “You can’t keep retreating back into your fucking mind just because you don’t want to… I don’t even fucking know. You have to get out of this. You see what it’s doing to us, right?”

She looks around. They all look so…

Muted.

Softened.

“Forgive me,” she hisses out, unintentionally angry -- she  _ meant  _ to be soft in sarcasm, not  _ angry,  _ “if I don’t want to deal, Hammerhead. We’re stuck on a toy race track. Come  _ on. _ ”

“God,” Hammerhead says, pushing herself off the ground as Jane follows. “I could rip your  _ fucking  _ face off.”

Jane turns to face her. So much shorter, yet mighty in her determination. She’s not going to force herself to deal with the outside world yet; it is cold and violent, a migraine. Light burning.

“It’s not about you or us or me,” she continues. “It’s about the girl. It’s about Kay. Have you  _ fucking  _ forgotten that?”

“Fuck you,” Jane says, letter her anger manifest now. “Fuck off.”

She pushes Hammerhead away. 

(Hammerhead has only ever wanted to  _ protect them— _

Guilt brews, momentarily—

_ No.  _ It is too painful.)

There is a sign hanging from the tree that branches over the lake. Freshly painted, silver.

_ TIME FOR A CHANGE—- _

  
  
  


Jane is forced into the waking world, pushed into reality. 

Slapped into the harshness of reality. It takes her too long to adjust. Her vision blurs, blackens. Her head hurts. It hurts so,  _ so  _ much. It aches. There is an ache deep inside of their body that can never be fixed.

“Did I... hurt… you?”

Jane awakens  _ fully  _ at the sound of Dorothy’s voice. She’s so innocent — it’s —  _ it’s— _

“What the fuck are you doing in here?”

“Sorry,” she says. Her voice shakes. “I was just trying to help… you were screaming in your sleep. I thought you were having a nightmare, and nobody likes nightmares, so I woke you up.”

“So you just barged into my personal space? You can’t just walk in here whenever you—” 

She stops herself. Dorothy doesn’t deserve this; she gets enough pain from Niles, from everyone, from everything; in some ways they are similar---

“Fuck,” she breathes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blow up at you.”

“It’s okay,” replies Dorothy, her eyes glued to the floor. Anxiety--- _ fear.  _ Shit. “I know being a grownup is hard, and sometimes you have to yell to get all the bad feelings out.”

Jane feels the ache again.

_ It’s about the girl. _

“No,” she tells Dorothy. “It shouldn’t have to be that way. That’s bullsh-- _ crap.  _ It’s not right. It’s not  _ normal. _ ”

“Then,” Dorothy says, her voice lilting, “what is?”

“I don’t know.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Larry tries not to think of himself as being similar to this shard of glass; broken, misplaced from the rest of entirety, extracted from his surroundings. Everything that he has known. An outsider, now with one, singular purpose: to be a mirror.

He realizes, with brutal force, that this shard of glass is  _ not  _ Larry Trainor, as he places it against the glue of Rita’s new vanity. 

This glass is the Negative Spirit.

He is so tired of metaphors.

Larry is  _ tired.  _ But he will not allow himself to fall back into that loathing. His hands do not shake as he continues shaping the tiny wood; he is so  _ good  _ at this now, at being useful. At being precise. He wishes that there was someone who could be proud of him. He wishes—-

A vast ocean ripple in his chest—

_ Proud— _

_ Of—- _

  
  


_ “I don’t think I’ve seen your son work harder on anything in his entire life.” _

_ “Is that right?” Larry asks. Here, he is uncharred. Here, he is suffering. Here, he knows only pain without acceptance. In this memory, the world is an endlessly spinning wound. _

_ “Gary,” Sheryl says, “why don’t you show your dad what you’ve made?” _

_ “Moment of truth.” _

_ He’s never seen Gary this happy before, his wide, toothy smile turning infectious. It’s so pure. He is such an innocent child. Every child deserves to be innocent, and Gary is. For now, in this moment, Gary is innocent. Feels— _

_ “Wow,” Larry says, and the feign of excitement  _ pangs in his present-day chest.  _ “Would you look at that, it’s an airplane.” _

_ “Not just an airplane,” Sheryl corrects. “Right, Gary?” _

_ “It’s the X-15.” _

_ “Get out,” Larry says; the smile on his face is genuine.  _ He was so happy. He was so,  _ so  _ happy. He just wanted his father to be proud of him.

The memory of his son creating the plane that ruined his life feels like an ending. An end to a cyclical story, apt to his luck — this shouldn’t feel like closure, like a door being locked. Why does it feel like—

_ “Just like the one dad’s flying into space.” _

_ Larry takes one look at it and all that he can see is the one flaw. Not his loving, beaming child. Not his family. There is one flaw in the airplane, and there is one flaw in Larry’s soul. All that he can comprehend is flaws. _

_ “Two wings, check,” he says. “My cockpit, check.” He flips the creation of life over in his hands. “Okay, why don’t you tell me what this is, right here, hm?” _

_ Gary smiles. With his hand, he mimics a rocket engine blasting off into space, his expression full of joy, but all that Larry can focus on is detail and issue. This is true for every aspect of his life.  _

_ “I guess you mean it’s the rocket engine,” he continues, “and without this dad doesn’t go into space. So, it’s very important to understand exactly where it goes and why.” He rips off the paper engine. _

_ “But I liked it where it was…” _

_ “Does it really matter, Larry?” _

With an uncomfortable amount of irony, dripping in his words:  _ “I don’t know, Sheryl, do you want your husband’s plane to break into a million pieces?” _

_ He rips off a piece of tape and places the “rocket engine” inside of the plane. _

_ And the smile on his son’s face is gone. Stolen. _

_ “Tell you what,” he says. “Let’s start over.” _

Larry drops his tweezers, his hands trembling.

It’s been so long since the Spirit has done this.

“Is there a reason you’re showing me that, pal?” He places his hand over his chest as it stirs within, forces a glow. “Maybe it’s you just telling me we need a break.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Vic slides the door open, slow and gentle, to take today’s twentieth glance at the painting. “Yep,” he says, and as his eyes move over Mr. Nobody’s frame, something inside of him twists. “You stay right where you are, you bastards.”

He turns to leave, turns to banish them—

_ and hears a rustling.  _ When he turns back, Mr. Nobody’s placement in the painting has vanished completely, a ghost now, and Vic feels his heart quicken and burn, feels his veins boil. Panic. He is so scared, and he is very rarely scared.

“Grid,” he says. “What’s going on? Analysis?”

“What do you mean, Victor?”

“I  _ mean,  _ what — what happened to Mr. Nobody?”

“Eric Morden was trapped in this painting of the dimension known as the White Space upon your exit from it.”

Grid plays footage of their escape. It’s chilling. It’s sickening. It’s horrible. He remembers—

“There appears to be a malfunction in your visual processors. Apologies.”

When Vic looks again, Mr. Nobody is right here he’s supposed to be. Frozen.

What the fuck is wrong with him?

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Rita tries to pretend that she’s not trying to be powerful. No one is looking yet, but she pretends regardless. She manifests her attempts at manipulating her body as simple warm up stretches. Acting exercises; she calms herself. Does a side lunge, until Vic appears next to her —  _ finally. _

Only he can help.

“Where were you?” she asks.

“Why, did I miss anything?”

“Maybe,” Rita says, her voice hollow, “I would be further along in my training if I had a  _ consistent  _ teacher. Is it so wrong to desire simple mastery of one’s limbs? After 60 years of watching myself puddle into a pool of shame and self-loathing, to  _ finally  _ ask not what I can do for my body, but what my body can do for me?”

“Sure,” Vic replies. “What’s your end-game?”

It’s been a week since she asked him to help her, and this is his first time asking that question.

“Maybe, if we ever manage to claw ourselves out of this mess,  _ maybe  _ I can devote myself to the greater good.”

“So you wanna become a superhero? That’s what all this training is about?”

“No,” she says. It is embarrassingly false. It turns her body and mind transparent. Yes. Yes, she does. Then: “Why? Is that ridiculous to you? You’ve never heard such a foolish thing, have you.”

“You know you can never actually cut it, right?”

Her face begins to melt. Shame. It burns. Her neck boils, her skin boils, until she manages to calm herself. How can he—

“Try that arm now.”

“What?”

“Go on.”

When Rita reaches out, her arm extends — extends —  _ extends _ , and then falls down to the fakeness of the grass and recoils back into normalcy.

Oh. She sees his aim now.

“Now, just find a way to do it without being insulted. Same time tomorrow.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


_ An unwelcome memory of a pregnant Kate. An entirely, horribly unwelcome memory of his father telling him he will fail — the awful realization that his father was right. His head— _

His head bumps against the toy car. Dorothy. Dorothy, pulling him out of the flashback.

“Jesus, kid,” he screams. “What?”

“Sorry. I…. I was just… I’ve never been in an automobile. Are… are you going for a drive?”

“Fuck, fuck my  _ life. _ ” 

“This one seems nice.”

She doesn’t —- she —-

She’s already climbing into the car. Fuck this. Fuck everything.

Off they go.

  
  
  
  
  


But—

  
  
  
  
  


The truck—

  
  


Blood—

_ Kate, Clara— _

  
  
  


It’s painful. As he drives, he  _ remembers  _ it all. The blood splattered across the cracked windshield. Kate’s decapitated head. Clara’s arm. The—

  
  
  


“Cliff?”

He forces himself back. In the rearview mirror: a woman with a mirror for a face and lightbulbs for eyes. Just for one, brief moment, until she disappears—-

What the fuck?

He brings the car to a screeching halt.

“Okay, we’re done. What the absolute  _ fuck  _ was that?”

“Sorry, that was just—”

“Wait, you know that thing?”

Dorothy looks on the verge of tears. “That was Darling,” she says. “One of my friends from inside my head. They’re fine, they — they only come out when I’m sad… or happy. Please, please don’t be mad.”

She reaches out to touch—

“Don’t do that,” he says. “I’m not one of your friends. I don’t have time to play with—”

“ _ Cliff. _ ”

Dorothy runs away as Niles rolls in. He should feel bad, he  _ should. _ He should feel—

“Fuck you,” Cliff spits, and walks away.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 2nd part of this episode is coming soon! I wanted to break it up into 2 parts to see what everyone thinks of it so far, so please let me know! Not much has changed yet, I know, but it will in the 2nd part and the episodes after that as well.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is HIGHLY appreciated.


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